About Thomas Fitzgerald

Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography. 

Using Film Candy to make Boring Shots Arty

Using Film Candy to make Boring Shots Arty

Just a quick post for today, as I've lots on, and this is kind of a shameless plug post, but anyway. I often take simple shots that I use for embellishing blog posts, either here or on other sites. They're usually nothing fancy and usually something that I just do quickly because I'm writing in a hurry. One of the things I'll often do is give them a treatment of some kind to give them a stylised look which makes them more interesting. This is how my Film Candy presets sort of came about, and I've been using them in this context recently, so I thought I'd give you a quick example.

I just got this cool little character in the post (I love Danboard, by the way), and I was taking some shots to use on Flickr and to send to some people. I used my Fuji X-E1 with the 35mm lens, mostly at f1.4, which gave some nice bokeh. Once I got them into Lightroom, I was playing around with different looks, and I used the "Gelato" preset from my Film Candy 2 set on all of them. This gave the shots a nice, almost vintage effect, which was perfect for what I was trying to achieve.

I know some people don't like filters and effects, and I'm not saying that applying a look will fix a bad shot, but sometimes a little creative grading takes an ordinary scene and gives it a little something to let it stand out and look a little different.

Gelato is part of my Film Candy 2 set of presets which is available on my Download store.

The Dublin Famine Memorial

The Dublin Famine Memorial

Quick News Update: Photos for Mac Updated in 10.10.4

Quick News Update: Photos for Mac Updated in 10.10.4